Amid Italy's earthquake rubble, 98-year-old woman is pulled free

Rescue workers look for earthquake survivors under a collapsed house in Aquila, Italy Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Whatever faults Maria D'Antuono may have, wasting time is not among them.

The 98-year-old villager, from Tempera, near L'Aquila, yesterday became one of the latest survivors to be dragged from the rubble left by Monday's devastating earthquake in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. For 30 interminable hours, she lay below the ruins of her house, a few miles from the epicentre.

So what did she do to while away the time, not knowing whether she would live or die as rescue workers dug towards her? The answer, it seems, was "crochet".

According to the Ansa news agency, D'Antuono was pulled from the rubble to cheers from the crowd and briefly answered questions from a reporter for Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset television network before she was taken to hospital. Asked how she had passed the time since her house had collapsed on her, she reportedly said she had been busy with her hook and wool.

She was given a packet of biscuits, but had a request that left onlookers even more astonished than before - and gave an entire new dimension to the concept of bella figura (which roughly translates as keeping up appearances). Before leaving for hospital, she said, she wanted a comb.

Last night, rescuers celebrated after a 20-year-old girl was found alive 42 hours after the quake under the rubble of a four-storey building, while alpine rescue specialists earlier managed to pull a young woman, Marta Valente, from the ruins of her house in L'Aquila after an excruciatingly delicate, five-hour operation. "There were dangerous beams very close by," said a member of the team. "We had to make sure that we didn't set off a collapse as we tried to free her legs." Valente was found still lying in the bed where she was asleep when the earthquake struck, but with a concrete beam less than 20cm away.

Her rescue and that of D'Antuono were among the few glimmers of hope on a day that saw the death toll rise to at least 228. Onna, a village of 300 a few miles from Tempera, was the worst-hit location. The number of victims there rose to 39. Rescue workers said there were no signs of more bodies.

But the provincial governor, Stefania Pezzopane, cautioned: "This is a village of old people. If their children don't come to say who is missing, no one will ever know."